Maximizing Productivity of a Decentralized, Data-saturated Workforce

Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. He was also the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century." Professor Malone teaches classes on organizational design, information technology, and leadership, and his research focuses on how work can be organized in new ways to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.

For example, Professor Malone predicted, in an article published in 1987, many of the major developments in electronic business over the following 25 years: electronic buying and selling, electronic markets for many kinds of products, outsourcing of non-core functions in a firm, and the use of intelligent agents for commerce. Then, in 2004, Professor Malone summarized two decades of his groundbreaking research in his critically acclaimed book, The Future of Work (also translated into six other languages).

Professor Malone has published over 100 articles, research papers, and book chapters, including a widely cited 2010 article in Science magazine on measuring the collective intelligence of human groups. He is also an inventor with 11 patents and the co-editor of three books: Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology (2001), Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century (2003), and Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook (2003). In 2012, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zurich.

Malone has been a cofounder of three software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. He speaks frequently for business audiences around the world and has been quoted in numerous publications such as the New York Times, the Economist, and Wired. Before joining the MIT faculty in 1983, Malone was a research scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). His background also includes a B.A. in mathematical sciences from Rice University, an M.S. in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in cognitive and social psychology from Stanford University.

Keith Jones

Vice President, Worldwide Product Marketing

Lexmark

Keith Jones

Keith Jones has been vice president of worldwide product marketing for Lexmark’s Imaging Solutions and Services Division since November 2010. Jones has been with Lexmark since its inception in 1991 and has experience with a broad range of technologies and markets. Throughout his career, he has been actively involved in developing and aligning product strategies with the needs of customers.

The future of work is already being shaped by today’s trends. One powerful force is the rampant growth of business information. Even in this digital age, much of this information still exists as paper. This largely unstructured data stays locked outside your existing processes and systems.

Increasingly decentralized teams struggle to bridge the information gaps and silos that hinder productivity, customer service and business success. As we enter the age of “hyperspecialization,” knowledge workers depend on information that can be transported anywhere in the world nearly instantaneously and at almost no cost.

Process Strategies for Decentralized Organizations

MIT professor, critically acclaimed author and organizational visionary, Thomas Malone, takes a look at process strategies for today’s decentralized workforce. For almost three decades, Malone has been researching the enormous impact of information technology on organizations. He will help you think through the new and necessary ways of working and how to best put them into practice.

You’ll learn the answers to these core questions:

What is changing?

What can you do about it?

Where do you start?

The Role of Output, Process and Content Management

What is the new role of process in all this? Imagine an end-to-end platform to load and offload specific information chunks, and intelligently manage their interaction and availability to centralized business systems and decentralized groups of knowledge workers. Optimized processes to better control paper and digital information are one key to better productivity in decentralized and hyperspecialized enterprises.

In the second part of this webinar Keith Jones, VP Worldwide Marketing, OEM and Alliances for Lexmark’s Printing Solutions and Services Division, explains how smart output, process and content management help you overcome paper-document inefficiency and information overload. This three-part strategy replaces paper-based systems and hardware with workflow-optimized devices and processes.

Join us to prepare for the future of work and the changing work of today.